Teach Your Players How To Master The Basics With These Fundamental Basketball Drills

Easy and effective fundamental basketball drills for coaches.

The fundamental basketball drills listed below will help you teach your players the basic fundamentals of the game. These are simple basketball drills that focus on starting, stopping, pivoting and footwork. These are all important aspects of basketball and areas that your players need to work on in order to improve their overall game.

I suggest that you perform some, if not all, of these basketball fundamental drills during each of your practices. These basketball drills work great at the beginning of practice as part of your team's warm up.

Fundamental Basketball Drills

The goal of these basketball fundamental drills is to help your players work on the their overall movement...starting, stopping, running, pivoting, changing pace and other movements they'll use on the basketball court.

To start these basketball drills, have your players form four lines on the baseline facing the coach at half-court. The players will perform each of the fundamental movements listed below down the court and back.

Stutter Step - Players will go down court with their hands up making their shoes squeak. This simulates the stutter step.

Change of Pace - Players will make a quick move followed by a slow move, working on changing pace. Players should use a variety of movements and changes. This simulates the constant change of pace that occurs throughout a basketball game.

Pivots - Players will run down the court performing front and rear pivots at the free throw line, half-court line and opposite free throw line. They should stop, pivot and then go.

Quick Stops - Players will run down the court performing quick stops at the free throw line, half-court line and opposite free throw line. Both feet should stop at the same time.

Stride Stops - Players will run to the free throw line, stop, reverse and run back to the baseline. They will the run from the baseline to the half-court line and back to the free throw line, free throw line to opposite free throw line and back to half-court line, half-court line to opposite baseline back to opposite free-throw line and finish up to the opposite baseline.

This is a great basketball drill that combines starting, stopping, using the jump stop, pivoting and conditioning.

Spacing Jog - The first player in each line jogs down the court at their own pace. The next player starts when the first player passes the free throw line. The players must maintain this distance all the way down the court.

Having the players do start and stop moves and change of pace moves will make this more challenging. This basketball drill focuses on teaching proper floor spacing.

*Special Note* - These fundamental basketball drills are extremely simple and may even seem boring, especially to your players. It's important that you emphasize to your players what each drill is working on and how it relates to a game situation.

Starting, stopping, pivoting, running and changing pace are all part of the game, and are skills that your players must work on in order to be an effective basketball player.